All Stories
- Physics
Explainer: Radioactive dating helps solve mysteries
Knowing the decay rate of radioactive elements can help date ancient fossils and other artifacts.
- Earth
Fossil-fuel use is confusing some carbon-dating measurements
Carbon-14 dating of recent artifacts will soon give scientists confusing results. That’s another price society pays for its reliance on fossil fuels.
- Computing
Scientists Say: Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is technology smart enough to do tasks that would normally require human brainpower.
- Plants
Why dandelions are so good at widely spreading their seeds
Individual seeds on a dandelion release most easily in response to winds from a specific direction. As the wind shifts, this scatters the seeds widely.
- Climate
Greenland’s inland ice is melting far faster than anyone thought
Inland melting of the Northeast Greenland Ice Stream is accelerating — and may contribute far more to sea level rise than earlier estimates suggested.
- Tech
Will the internet soon reach the one-third of people without it?
Access to the internet is a human right, yet much of the world can’t get online. New tech has to be affordable and usable to end this digital divide.
- Health & Medicine
Toddler now thrives after prenatal treatment for a genetic disease
Ayla was treated before birth for the rare, life-threatening Pompe disease. Now a thriving 16-month-old toddler, her treatments will still need to continue.
- Fossils
Let’s learn about pterosaurs
These ancient flying reptiles were not dinosaurs, but they were close relatives.
- Math
Meet the newest additions to the metric system
The metric system just got its first update in 30 years. New prefixes will help scientists interpret the biggest — and smallest — numbers.
- Brain
Playing video games may improve your memory and attention
The biggest research study of its kind finds that video gamers perform better on some mental tasks than nongamers do.
- Humans
This ancient ivory comb reveals a wish to be free of lice
The comb bears the earliest known complete sentence written in a phonetic alphabet, researchers say.
- Chemistry
Forensic scientists are gaining an edge on crime
Advances in forensic science are helping to recover invisible fingerprints and identify missing people from bits of tissue or bone.
